Week 2 of INF206 placed increasing demands on both my left and right brain-hemispheres: both sides employed to make sense of rapidly evolving Social Media and Networking environments, risking havoc when referencing resources. Outdated and obsolete links hinder the process; or speed it up, depending on the threads and crumbs followed. Creative analysis, some may call it “best guess” is often correct – at that given moment!

As we study the accoutrements of Web 2.0, it is clear, that we are already immersed in Web 3.0. As referred to in my musings over Week 1, we are already propagating the very definition.

The ever-changing algorithms behind Facebook provide a simple examples of the way in which the “computer” generates new information. Advertisement feeds, friend feeds, subscription feeds, and, rather spookily, one may even consider them thought feeds; where product placement, friend suggestions, and the debatable choice of which news and/or activity feeds are listed on our preferred landing page, are hardly human-generated. I don’t particularly need to lose weight; my husband certainly doesn’t need Viagra and, no thanks, I don’t want to be the 665,001st subscriber to your Russian pole dancing blog! On the other hand, I am very interested in being your ‘friend’, following the European Debt Crisis, the United States Presidential candidature and listen to your music.

Arguing the concept that Web 3.0 returns the “experts and authorities”, the available technologies, networks and diversity of Apps, facilitate the ease with which human engagement and interaction with technology help shape the very technologies that emerge.

This is Web 3.0. Human choices, determining algorithmic specifics, delivered to the desktop: for our consumption, use and, if licensed, for example under Creative Commons, our transformation.

Paraphrasing The Technium, the choices we make colour the character of ensuing technology.

Pondering Web 3.0:

The choices we make – to include or exclude ourselves and/or others

What we miss by the choices we make

Collectively, we create an exotropic force

Also in Week 2:

If the concept of a “metaverse” is the convergence of the Virtual and physical worlds, in reality, it is up to us to make it so.

Whilst I appreciate the convenience of bookmarks in the cloud, I find it a very clumsy platform, and prefer that I wasted no more time on it.

With, anecdotally, hundreds of popular book-marking sites, the most efficient ‘space’ within which to collate and organise the innumerable useful ‘links’, beside my desktop, is yet to be discerned … watch this space.

Things I love:

Human life is human connection

We are the agency of our connections.

Concluding this week’s muse, in the virtual, and physical world, I like the perception that: